Fully Printed CNC On An IKEA Table

February 2, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 15 Comments

It seems that many 3D printer owners just aren’t getting the same buzz they used to off their 3D printers, and are taking steps to procure heavier machines. And making them in their home laboratories with, you guessed it, their 3D printers.

Following the pattern, [Michael Reitter], designed a 3D printable CNC around a IKEA MALM table. In order to span the length of the table for his X axis, he came up with a very cool looking truss assembly. The linear rails rest on top of the truss, and a carriage with the Z axis rides on the assembly. The truss has enough space in the center of it to neatly house some of the wiring. The Y-xis mounts on the side of the table.

Overall the mechanical design looks pretty solid for what it is, with all the rails taking their moments in the right orientation. We also like the work-piece hold downs that slide along the edge of the table. It even has a vacuum attachment that comes in right at the milling bit.

We’re not certain how much plastic this build takes, but it looks to be a lot. Monetarily, it will probably weigh in at a bit more than some other options. As many in the 3D printing world are discovering, sometimes there’s no reason not to leverage more mature industrial processes for lower cost large gains in accuracy and strength. Though, it’s pretty clear that one of the design goals of this project was to see how much one can get away with just a 3D printer, and we certainly can’t deny the appealing aesthetic of this CNC.

Video of it in action after the break.

Continue reading “Fully Printed CNC On An IKEA Table” →

Debug An IKEA Lamp Hack, Win A Lamp Controller

September 14, 2015 by Richard Baguley 61 Comments

[Limpkin], aka Hackaday alum [Mathieu Stephan], is at it again, converting an IKEA lamp into a visual wake-up light. He wants to build an alarm that can be remotely triggered, He’s basing this project around a combination of an ESP8266 that handles the communication and timing, and a pile of 10-watt RGB LEDs. However, he is having a problem: every time he initializes the PWM (pulse width modulation) signalling that will control the level of the LEDs, his ESP8266 dev board reboots. So, he’s offering an interesting bounty for the person who finds the issue: figure it out and he will send you the lamp. Well, the PCB and components, anyway: you’ll have to add your own IKEA lamp. It’s an interesting approach to debugging a hardware problem, so feel free to take a look. The full hardware and software details are on his GitHub repository.

Flat Pack Elastic Band Lamp Is A Thing Of Beauty

June 3, 2015 by Rick Osgood 13 Comments

[Matt] was looking for a project for his senior industrial design studio at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He ended up designing a clever lamp that can be flat packed. [Matt] started by drawing out designs on paper. He really liked the idea of combining curves with straight lines, but he wanted to translate his two-dimensional drawings into a three-dimensional shape.

Having access to a laser cutter made the job much easier than it could have been and allowed [Matt] to go through many designs for the lamp frame. The two main pieces were cut from acrylic and include mounting pegs for the elastic bands. The two plastic pieces are designed to slot together, forming a sort of diamond shape.

The final version of the lamp required that the elastic bands had holes punched in them for mounting. The holes were placed over the small pegs to keep the bands in place. [Matt] used 3/4″ industrial elastic bands for this project. He then used a 120V 15W candelabra light bulb to illuminate the lamp. The final design is not only beautiful, but it can be flat packed and manufactured inexpensively.

If you want more inspiration for artistically designed lamps check out this one that uses the corrugation in cardboards as a shade pattern.

[via reddit]

Absolute Overkill IKEA Lampan Lamp Hack

May 24, 2015 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

Sometimes too much overkill isn’t enough. [Jesus Echavarria] hacked an IKEA Lampan light for his daughter to add color LEDs, a timer, Bluetooth control over the hue, and a local override knob. The result: a $5 lamp with at least $50 of added awesomeness. Let’s have a look at the latter.

The whole lamp system is based around a PIC microcontroller and WS2811 LEDs for the color light show. Since the lamp was already built to run a 40W lightbulb, and [Jesus] wanted to retain that functionality, he added an SSR to the build. Yeah, it’s rated for 5,000W, but it’s what he had on hand.

Next comes the low-voltage power supply. [Jesus] needed 5V for the PIC, and used the guts from a cheap USB charger as a quick and dirty 5V converter — a nice hack. To power the HC-05 Bluetooth module, which requires 3.3V, he wired up a low-dropout voltage regulator to the 5V line. A level-converter IC (74LVC07) gets the logic voltage levels straight between the two.

A fuse for the high-voltage power line, screw-terminal connectors all around, and a potentiometer for manual override round out the hardware build.

On the software side, [Jesus] set up the knob to turn on and off the built-in lamp as well as control the colors of the LED ring. That’s a nice touch for when his daughter wants to change the lamp’s color, but doesn’t want to go find her cellphone. But when she does, the SPP Pro app sets the colors by sending pre-programmed serial commands over Bluetooth to the PIC in the lamp.

All in all, a nice build, well-documented, and with enough rough edges that none of you out there can say it’s not a hack. Nice job [Jesus]! We can’t wait to see what he does next… robot lamp anyone?

20 MPH IKEA Poäng Chair With Aerospace-Inspired Control Panel

March 31, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 21 Comments

Spending time at work sitting on the same drab chair can get boring after a while, even if you’re lucky to use a comfortable recliner. If you want to win the Office Olympics, you need something with a bit of pep. [StuffAndyMakes] wanted to build a completely ridiculous motorized office chair. A couple of years in the making, and he’s ready to unleash the 20 MPH IKEA Poäng chair with aerospace-inspired control panel!

The OfficeChairiot MkII, as he has christened it aptly, is a motorized IKEA Poäng comfy chair. It uses off-the-shelf scooter parts to roll around : Batteries, motors, chains, sprockets, tires, axles, and bearings. The OfficeChairiot MkII is basically three main parts – the Chassis, the Control Panel and the comfy chair. One of the main parts of the chassis is the motor controller – The Dimension Engineering Sabertooth 2×60 motor controller – which is also used in beefy battlebots. It’s capable of carrying 1,000 lbs. of cargo and can feed the drive system up to 60 amps per motor channel .

The brain on the chassis is an Arduino Mega which can be controlled via a hand held remote. The Mega also receives data from various sensors for motor temperature, power wire temperature, ambient air temperature, wheel RPM’s, Accelerometer’s, seat occupancy and GPS data. The firmware is designed to ensure safety. The hand held remote needs to ping the on-board Arduino twice a second. If it doesn’t hear from the Remote for whatever reason, the unit stops and turns off the lights.

The Control Panel is one crazy collection of switches, buttons, displays, a missile switch, a master key switch – in all over 30 switches and buttons. All of the devices on the panel are controlled via a second Arduino Mega, helped by a custom multiplexer board to help connect the large number of devices.

Here are a few more features the OfficeChairiot MkII boasts of :

1.5 Horsepower from two 500W scooter motors
20W stereo and MP3 sound effects
Weapons sounds, 15 different fart sounds, car alarm, horns, etc.
All LED lighting: Headlights, turn signals, 88 undercarriage RGB LEDs
Plenty of homemade PCB’s
Custom built aluminum body panels (with help from Local Motors, the people behind the 3D printed car)

Aside from the handcrafted wood chassis and circuits boards and firmware, it’s all off-the-shelf stuff. [StuffAndyMakes] plans on open-sourcing the schematics, C++ code and CAD drawings – so post some comments below to motivate him to do so soon. We’d sure like to see a few more of these being built, so that Office Chair racing becomes a competitive sport. Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading “20 MPH IKEA Poäng Chair With Aerospace-Inspired Control Panel” →

Internet Knows Your Every Move Thanks To IKEA And ESP8266

March 29, 2015 by Will Sweatman 4 Comments

[terenceang] got his feet wet with the ESP8266 WiFi module by hacking up an IKEA Molgan PIR light. The stock PIR light simply lights when motion is detected. [terenceang] added some extra functionality to it by making it send notifications to his phone as well.

The default configuration of the stock PIR light was to only work at night. This is done with a photo diode. It was removed to make it work in daylight, along with several other components. He removed a handful of current limiting resistors to disable the hi output LEDs. One was preserved as a visual indicator. The onboard voltage regulator didn’t supply enough current for the ESP8266. [terenceang] used some electronic wizardry and was able to solve the problem with an opto-coupler.

The one thing he would change is moving from battery to mains power, as expected battery life is less than two weeks.Schematics, source code and tons of great pictures are available on his blog. If you want to give it a try but need a crash course check out the recent news that the Arduino IDE works with ESP8266, or give direct programming a try.

Shower Occupancy Sensor Keeps Peace/Eliminates Odor At The Office

January 2, 2015 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

When the first two prototype ingredients listed are paperclips and Post-it notes you know it’s going to be good. The problem: one shower stall at work with numerous co-workers who bike to the office. The solution: a occupancy monitor that is smart enough to know that someone is actually in the room. You know what we’re talking about, a sensor that knows more than whether the door is open or closed. [James] got wise and built a sensor to monitor whether the door is bolted or not. We think this method is far superior to motion-based systems.

This uber-smart sensor is simply a pair of paperclips anchored on a rolled Post-it note substrate and shoved in the receiver on the door jamb. When the bolt is locked from the inside it pushes the paperclips together completing the simple circuit. This is monitored by a Spark Core but will work with just about any monitoring system you can devise. What we’re trying to figure out is how to ruggedize the paper-clip hack which we can’t think will perform well for very long. It looks like there’s room to bore out a bit more inside the receiver hole. Perhaps leaf switch with a 3D printed mounting bracket?

Oh, and kudos on the Ikea food storage container for the enclosure. That’s one of our favorite tricks for hacks which are installed for the long-run.